Desires, intentions and actions.

I get in ruts a lot in life, times where I just do not know what to do next. This can be easily frustrating, but I choose not look at it in that way at all. I think ruts are a great thing and something we need in life. If we never get into ruts how will we ever desire anything more from ourselves and from our lives.

In life we have desires, intentions and actions. Many people say that talk is cheap but i think its a little more pricey then we tend to think. Never belittle desires, never belittle intentions, these are a must! It shows that we want more for ourselves and for who we choose to be everyday. Yes there is a time you need more then the want of change, but we must never belittle the desire and intention of it.

Eventually those intentions need to become actions, change is going to have to come into play. One day you are going to have to look at your life and say i have all these intentions and desires for myself that i need to and want to act on but what is holding me back? Eventually the question of do i love the thing that is holding me back more then i love God, or do i love God more. Its a hard question but one day you are going to have to look yourself in mirror and ask yourself just that. Galatians 1:10 it says Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. Ok i am going to just put this out there, people suck at life. We judge just as much as we blink but the truth of the matter is that what we think is pointless, we only answer to one. One day you are going to have to face you maker and i don't want him to say, you loved, money more then me, you loved people more then me, you love sex more then me, you loved fun more then me, or you loved things more then me. I want him to look at me and say your love for my flourished through you everyday.

I find that when i choose to go my path in life rather then Gods things in my life tend to fall apart, maybe right away things work out but in the long run it tends to go to crap. God stops being my focus and my prayer life becomes less and less. The great thing is though when i choose Gods way its might be hard at first but it is always worth it. In the book i am reading call, "The Me I Wanna Be," it but it like this...

“The truth is, a life of freedom and joy is right now. My main job is to remain connected with God. When my primary focus is to remain present with him, everything else has a way of falling into place. When my primary focus becomes anything else, my inner vitality suffers, and I become a lesser version of myself.”

I think in other words God gives us a choice, a choice of instant satisfaction or a longing joy that can never be broken. God says i might not give you the things you want, but I will give you the things you need trust in me.

Is that scaring to think about, trusting God. Becoming more of what God intends you to be, does that thought make you uncomfortable? WELL GOOD! stop being comfortable and let lose, give yourself and opportunity to show Jesus that you trust him and in doing this people will see you and you will show them God through your actions. Benefitting others with your life is the whole purpose to your faith.

In 1 Peter 1:6-9 it say So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. ⁷ These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world. You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy. ⁹ The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls.

If you need some comfort here it is, Joy is coming your way when you trust God through the good bad and ugly. The greatest thing is that no matter what happens in trusting him you win, you get the ultimate goal. You trust God you get salvation and through trusting him this can benefit others salvation as well. In other words everything could go wrong but you still win, you get eternal life with the one who made you. Granted God wants you to be happy and i doubt everything would go wrong.

This is a process all of it but in time something amazing happens, we earnestly seek to be in his presence and our intentions become Gods intentions and His desires becomes our desires. Our actions begin to show Jesus and his love. We stop having to make hard choices and feel like we are giving up something. There comes a time where we ask ourselves is this "thing" going to benefit my faith or hinder it. When this happens decisions come easier and our faith begins to flourish. Things that use to matter don't anymore and things we use to want so badly seem well worthless to us. Eventually you love nothing more than you love God and in that moment you realize the true meaning of something.....Grace.

How do you respond

Haven't wrote in here for a long time but I have had a constant statement caught in my head for the past two weeks. It was something my good friend told me about, "how do you respond." This can be taking a lot of different ways but for what is going on in my life I took it like this. Life is filled with actions and response, situations and responses, struggles and responses, tasks and responses, circumstances and responses; its filled with stuff in our lives and responses. The key word in all of this statements is responses. How you respond in things that God places in our life is so important. SO how do you respond?

God's Will is going to be done, whether we like it or not. How do you respond? God is going to call us to to do hard things, how do you respond? God is going to give us blessings and joys, how do you respond? God is going to let trials happen to you, how do you respond? I could go on and on, the point is our response makes us who we are and it also in ways shows who we really are. one of my favorite quotes is from one tree hill, "Because it's only when you're tested that you truly discover who you are. And it's only when you're tested that you discover who you can be. The person that you want to be does exist, somewhere in the other side...of hard work and faith, and belief and beyond the HEARTACHE and fear of what life had." I know that One tree hill doesn't have all the answer but i think they have a point with this quote. God uses stuff all the time to shape us, frame us and sculpt us to who he intends us to be little by little. How do you respond?

There are going to be times where God is going to call you to do something hard, something where you are going to trust him and rely on him. Are you going to fold under the pressure, let fear over come you or trust him. There will be times i fall but thats ok because there is a benefit to trust him. 1Peter 1:8-9. states, You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy. The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls. At the end of the day we trust him and thats all we do, well heck look at that, we have salvation and joy. Thats not too bad if you ask me. So again how do you respond?

The beauty of all of this is God is constant, and he will never let you down. He assures us in 1 Corinthians 10:13 saying, All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; He'll never let you be pushed past your limit; He'll always be there to help you come through it. If there is one thing that God is, it is constant so we know we can always rely on him. How do you respond?

In James 1 :2-4 it states, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Now looking at my hard times, trails and struggles in this light it makes me response all the important. Again, how do you respond?

So after look at all this, how i respond is more important than i could have ever known. Also if i know one thing its this, I know that God has nothing but greatness laid in front of me. So why i would i ever choose to respond any other way then a way that would make me better for Jesus or make this world better for Jesus? The thing I need to remember is, my relationship with Jesus isn't for my benefit, it never was. So yet another reason why my response is so important. Our lives are so beneficial for God and his Kingdom, this is easily forgotten in our everyday but yet so important. How do you respond, i guess if i could choose to remember one thing with every respond it would be this, if Jesus isnt the reason what is the purpose? SO one last time, How do you respond?

Romans 12 (message)

Place Your Life Before God

^1-2 So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

³I'm speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it's important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

^4-6In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we're talking about is Christ's body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn't amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ's body, let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't.

^6-8If you preach, just preach God's Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don't take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don't get bossy; if you're put in charge, don't manipulate; if you're called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don't let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.

^9-10Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

^11-13Don't burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don't quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

^14-16Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down. Get along with each other; don't be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don't be the great somebody.

^17-19Don't hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you've got it in you, get along with everybody. Don't insist on getting even; that's not for you to do. "I'll do the judging," says God. "I'll take care of it."

^20-21Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he's thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don't let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.

Psalms 13

¹ How long, O LORD ? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?

² How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

³ Look on me and answer, O LORD my God.

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;

⁴ my enemy will say, "I have overcome him,"
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

⁵ But I trust in your unfailing love;

my heart rejoices in your salvation.

⁶ I will sing to the LORD,
for he has been good to me.

I Hope to be sharing this with my basketball team here in the near future. God has really put it on my heart. Our team has and continues to be going through tough a season. But what i want to communicated with my team is that God has not turned his back on us. it is actually the complete opposite, he is using these tough times for these tough times to shape us to the people he intends us to be.

²Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. ⁴Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4

What i also want to share with my team is that there is so much more to life then basketball. It is such a huge part of our lives, so when it is going bad it can feel like everything is going bad. We continually forget that we have so many things to be thankful for, we have so many things that we must find joy in. There is such a difference between happiness and joy. We must strive for joy and hope for happiness. happiness is circumstantial, but joy now thats something that is always there.

watch the youtube video below and you will see just how much you have to be thankful for and where joy can come from.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Bz_EwHs_Q

Striving for greatness

Lately i have been doing some serious thinking at random times, like in the shower, during practice when i should be listening, night class. I have been thinking about how everyday people are striving for greatness in some sort of way. Things such as sports, school, looks, there body, and so much more. So again i have been thinking, what do i want to strive for greatness in, and after a lot of thought i have chosen relationships. I just feel like i want to be a great friend, a better daughter, someday a good wife and most importantly I need/want to be a better child of God. All those relationships are so important. I want to strive for greatness in something important, something that bigger then me, and honestly i can not think of any better way to do it. So where do i go from here? I pray and I pray. I pray for the courage, the selflessness, the awareness, and just the ability to be better in my relationships.

It all starts and ends with Love, when all false, we just gotta love people, and let people love us.

my life

By your side, by tenth avenue north

Why are you striving these days
Why are you trying to earn grace
Why are you crying
Let me lift up your face
Just don't turn away

Why are you looking for love
Why are you still searching as if I'm not enough
To where will you go child
Tell me where will you run
To where will you run

And I'll be by your side
Wherever you fall
In the dead of night
Whenever you call
And please don't fight
These hands that are holding you
My hands are holding you

Look at these hands and my side
They swallowed the grave on that night
When I drank the world's sin
So I could carry you in
And give you life


Cause I, I love you
I want you to know
That I, I love you
I'll never let you go

.....

trying to find my way